Tag Archive for Gluten-free

In the place where Gus used to watch me work, I put an art desk. His blanket lays under my feet.

It’s been a little over three weeks since Gus died. And it’s time to have people over for dinner.

I’m not gonna lie: I spend some of my days off sobbing, this new specific loneliness a pointy rake across my ribs. I kneel at Gus’s grave and picture his pointy little perfect face. It’s unbelievable that I will never see it again. Not ever. But I am practicing, with his love, to learn about death. Because it is going to keep coming. On the branches of my family tree. Within my cherished client list and at my communal table of friends. I don’t want to have the relationship to death that my culture has. So I think about that. And I watch the news.

So I am also thinking about Cleveland. About the scores of black activists and the activated, a powerful gathering of black humanity coming together in strength and love and thought and rage. I am thinking about Mike Brown and Sandra Bland and India Clarke and Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Michelle Cusseaux and Eric Garner and Rekia Boyd and London Chanel and Cynthia Hurd and Rev. Clementa Pinckney and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton and Tywanza Sanders and Myra Thompson and Ethel Lee Lance and Susie Jackson and Daniel L. Simmons and Depayne Middleton and the countless other Black lives I have not named here, taken too soon, in violence, in a long perfectly straight line right up from the slavery we built this country on. This is another kind of death.

As my friend J. Bob Alotta says,

“this country makes monsters out of it’s power-keepers, corpses out of so many of it’s children, renders so many sedated in complicity or agony or both… but it will make warriors out of the rest of us.
my gd, it surely will.”

And for this work, we must stay strong. We need to care for ourselves and each other in this work. Because it will be hard work. It will be work that is constant and difficult and exhausting. Sometimes it will be devastating. This work of making sure we support the voices of the #blacklivesmatter movement will call on our reserves if we do this work justice. If we give it what it deserves. And we must.

I will do this work. (Photo from Getty Images)

To do this work we need nourishment. We need community, love, sleep, friendship, and for me, faith. Luckily, these things often feed each other. And lifting my head from a dog’s grave to the news of yet another Black Mother burying her child at the hands of police who tried to cover it up, I am ready.

Harvest Duds.

From the earth that houses both the dead and this life, I harvested a bunch of ingredients to make this food, build community, care for my body, and come to share with you. I first made a version of this dish after seeing a recipe in The New York Times by Melissa Clark. I’ve since made several versions from cookbooks and blogs each employing variations from this Middle –Eastern dish. This is a dish from lands of people that have been nourishing themselves through war and heartbreak for many, many, too many years. It’s a rich concoction of deep flavor and vegetable protein and fiber and warmth. The flavors come from a long history of each region with local, class, and religious traditions varying the ingredients and the presentation. It is delicious and affordable and grounded.

Here I present to you a mash-up of different recipes that all come out in this fragrant and addictive version. There are a lot of ingredients, so if you’re new to longer recipes, it’s good to get all the ingredients out and prepped first. Have your garlic crushed and your shallot sliced into rings and so on. This amount will feed about 6-8 people.

Soak your lentils in warm water while you prep all your goods. Leeks often have dirt and grit inside them. Hack off the dark green fanned edges and the slice up the center of the leek lengthwise. Rinse the dirt out then cut them all crosswise, pretty thin. Heat your oil in a large heavy soup pot and toss in your leeks and sliced shallot. Cook until golden brown. It’ll take about ten minutes. They should get crunchy. Then set half the mixture aside in a bowl and dust with some salt. This is going to be a garnish at the end and everyone will wrestle for each last crumb. You’ll remember this later and use crunchy leeks and onion for all manner of things in the future. Like for topping your soups. Put your garlic in with the rest of everything and cook that for about a minute. Now add in your rice, cumin, allspice, turmeric, black pepper and coriander. Cook all of this for about 5 minutes. Now drain your lentils and add them to the pot. Cook it all for another minute. Add your vegetable broth, cinnamon stick and bay leaf and bring everything to a boil. Turn down to a simmer, cover, and cook everything for an hour.

Now lay your greens and mint over the whole pot and return the cover. Cook for another 5 minutes, then remover from heat and let sit covered for another 5-10 minutes. Serve with the crispy leeks and shallots.

OPTIONS: You can toss in a little cardamom for your spice mix. Toss in fresh squeezed lemon before you serve. Have it as a chilled side the next day. Make a yogurt sauce to go with it.

Some ingredients with Lilith Rockett’s beautiful porcelain and my novice, and cute, stoneware.

Steve and Tim came over from across the hill where they run Spirit Fire Retreat, home of my forthcoming October Lucky Devil Autumn Getaway. Stay tuned for details. In the mean time, enjoy this food with friends and activists and survivors. Enjoy it with a love of this life if at all possible. And if not, enjoy it any way you can.

Like Birkenstocks, millet isn’t just for hippies anymore. If I can be any force for the reintroduction into the mainstream of the wonders of millet, let it be so. As far as grains go, it has a good amount of vegetarian protein (6 grams), it’s gluten free for people practicing an auto-immune protocol, or those who are sensitive to the gluten, AND it tastes relish.

Let’s start with my current food darling, Amy Chaplain, and cook up a version of her mash. I have made this stuff EVERY week for 3 weeks since I got the book. I’ve served garlic greens on it, eggs, stirred in mushroom medleys and stuff roasted squash with it. It’s divine. Not only do you get a kind of corn-like flavor profile, you also get the added nutrient dense benefits of cauliflower along with it. PLUS, for kids who love grains and stray from vegetables THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN MESS WITH YOUR KIDS!!! It all looks beige to them and goddess knows, children love boring beige food. Look, I’m not trying to insult your kids, but AM I WRONG??!?!?! No. So try this. They won’t suspect a thing.

It’s fast, it’s versatile, it’s great for a whole family and it’s so affordable as quinoa skyrockets and cauliflower comes into season.

Rinse off your soaked grains and put them in the pot with the florets from your cauliflower, the broth/water and the S&P. Which is to say, PUT EVERYTHING IN THE POT. Bring the mix to a boil, then turn down to simmer and cover for 20 minutes. Check to see if all the liquid has been absorbed right about now. Then mash everything together.

You can add sautéed mushrooms, crispy onions or leeks, top with tamarin, flax oil, walnut oil or any other flavor you’re going for. Stirring in fresh spinach is delicious. Adding hippie dust is great too. The render greens are flash-cooked just by the heat of the mash and it’s DELICIOUS. Top with a toasted seed and nut mixture for crunch or have it on seed toast. Experiment! Let me know your favorite concoctions.

There is really nothing better in a crazy winter storm than a bowl of phenomenal chili. I concocted this version based on a venison recipe by Hank Shaw. If you are not a vegetarian, his version is really scrumptious and I think you might like it. I mean, it has slab bacon in it so there’s that. But for me a truly lovely thing about a bowl of chili is sitting around with a ton of friends and digging in. Because I know so many vegetarians, vegans and gluten free eaters, I like to make big batches of things that everyone can partake in. This spicy treat does the trick. And you know what Hank offered in his that sold me?

It’s the coffee.

(A rich decaf works just as well as full tilt if your crowd is caffeine free as well) The rich and earthy taste of this chili grounds the heat of the peppers and it’s just a damn joy. This recipe has some time notes so read it through first before attempting.

In a heavy lidded pot or Dutch oven, heat your olive oil. Add onion and shallots to the pot and cook until soft, stirring often. Now add your vampiric repellant garlic, and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Cut your sweet potato in half, then long quarters and slice thin. Add the quarter moons to the mix. Cook another 2 minutes and add your apple cider vinegar. Now add the beans, paprika, cumin, caraway, allspice, coriander and salt all together and stir to bring it all together like a show tune. You probably want to let all of this hang out for a few minutes to become family.

Add your blended chile mix and tomato paste, then the chopped tomatoes, maple syrup and cover everything with your vegetable broth. Bring it all home and then put the heavy lid on.
Pop it in the oven for 2 hours. Hank says you want to check to see if you need more salt and broth (I haven’t yet, but you never know), and to see how the beans are doing. If you have the jalapeño, this is its time to shine. Dice it and add it in. THEN WASH YOUR HANDS REALLY GOOD. And don’t rub your eyes or any other delicate areas on yourself or anyone you like a lot.

Pop it back in the oven for 30 minutes. Let rest for 15 minutes. Serve with your grain of choice, or bread, or chips and top with cilantro. Or if you are stuck in a storm and only have arugula like in this photo, use that.

You finally found a health care professional who has an idea that may help you feel better after months and sometimes years of feeling like absolute dogshit. You’re blotchy, bloated, your joints ache. You feel depressed and fatigued. Maybe your skin condition is out of control or if things are really really awful, maybe all of this and MORE.

Then comes the suggestion of an Elimination Diet. Or the GAPS Diet. Or an Anti-inflammatory Diet. Whether these suggestions are for the benefit of detective work to suss out what the culprit might be (eliminating all the usual suspects and then slowly bringing them back in to test reactions to substances) or perhaps the food suggestions/prescriptions are in response to allergy tests that pointedly spike in the face of certain foods, you’re not psyched. Regardless of which protocol is suggested or the root of why it is suggested, the news of cutting out EVERYTHING FUN IN THE WORLD can feel pretty crushing. For some, our health has deteriorated to such an extent that trying anything feels like a relief. Some people have been so ill for so long that a steady diet of goat milk, buffalo and steamed carrots might be just the ticket to heaven, that sweet relief someone has been waiting for. Food allergies and sensitivities can really wreck a functional life to an astonishing extent. It is my sincere hope that true misery and illness are not the only reasons a person might be brought to the place of willingness and compliance with various protocols.

So what can you do with this when the news comes in? When you think. “Holy shit. My friends won’t want to hang out with me. I’m going to be the irritating special food needs person at the table asking a billion questions of the waitress. Or I won’t be able to go out to eat at all. I don’t know how to cook. I don’t have time for this shit. I don’t have energy for this shit. I don’t have energy at all. Also, this isn’t sexy. Plus I have spent years recovering from diets and the negative effects of them on my body and my true soul. Why me?”

Well. I mean.
WHY NOT YOU?

The first thing I want you to know is you can do this. Because doing it might actually work. And not doing it has landed you exactly where you are, and following that path isn’t your desired life. So fuck that path. You deserve to feel good, heal your body, and enjoy your food along the way. What will it take?

1. Time to mourn: Being sick sucks. It sucks. Especially in a culture that wants clear answers for illness and then a nice pill to clear everything up. So I bet even if you are one of the lucky people who has suffered through mysterious symptoms that no one can figure out and you’ve actually LET yourself complain, I want to say that wallowing and mourning are not the same. Mourning requires a true kind of compassion for the suffering you’ve been doing. Really look at how hard this has been. If you need to look at a photograph of yourself to externalize your own image in order to have feelings for the human you are looking at, do that. Write about it. Ask someone who has been supportive and kind to reflect their experience of watching you weather the storm so you can adopt those kind feelings for yourself as well. Once you are to a place where you have some room free of blaming yourself, get willing to try something new.

2. Gather your people: Before you worry about the kitchen, the shopping, the cooking, the time suck, the impossibility of it all, look around you and see if you can find some people who are willing to help. And by help I mean everything from listening to cooking to a meal companion. Find a trusted group from 1-4 people to rely on for the first couple of weeks of your trial here. Let everyone know the specifics of your protocol, how long it might take, what you are afraid of, what you are actually great at, and how they can help. At the center of this reliable core is, well, you. Be reliable. Be supportive. Be nice. Try your best to be your own ally.

3. Toot your own horn: This process means you have to ask yourself these questions as well. What are your strengths? Are you a great cook? Do you like to shop? Are you fucking hilarious? Are you good with recipe research? How can your skills be the things you commit to in this process and where can you use support? This will not only inform you about how to ask your people for help, but it’ll help you rediscover how you do have skills and you are competent and every little piece of you matters. Because when we feel sick, we forget.

4. Look for what you get: When you begin to find yourself wandering toward the Land of Wallow, remember this: even if you can’t have these things: beer, cheese, weed, soy, wheat, tomatoes, citrus, nuts, bacon, corn, peppers, potatoes, a burger, milk, eggs, half and half, bourbon, sugar, honey, cigarettes, pizza ,and COFFEE, for fuck’s sake, there are still over 4 billion combinations of food you CAN have, many of which are incredibly delicious. March your brain to a different tune. What are the things you do get to have. Who are the bloggers that work with those things? Are there cookbooks to support you in the library?

5. Avoid minefields: Sometimes, in an effort to not feel left out socially or to diminish our feelings of freakishness too early on in our efforts to recover from food related illness, we may find ourselves saying “Fuck it” and go to a bar with friends to watch the Super Bowl. We are then surrounded by beer, tipsiness, the entire nation of everything fried (which smells so good), bowls of pretzels and salted nuts, and popcorn. Our football journey may serve to alienate us even further or tip us over the edge into a chicken wing bonanza with jalapeno poppers. Doesn’t help with healing the gut. Instead, throw a small party yourself, invite your crew over, make snacks and request friendly ones to your protocol.

6. Find rewards outside the realm of food: Bring your salad and steamed sesame broccoli with shiitakes and rice to a baseball game. (In April-October) Treat yourself to a long walk you keep meaning to take. Take a sick day and go see a matinee. Let yourself turn the phone off. Get a new cookbook that supports your challenges. Go on retreat. Get a foot massage. Knit. Listen to music on headphones while you lie on the floor in the dark. Pick anything. I usually pick Yo Yo Ma when I’m in this place, but just as easily pick Tribe Called Quest. Go look at art. Pet the dog. Get a dog. GET A DOG!

7. There’s no wagon to fall off of. I know a lot of practitioners get all, “Well just one slip up and you have to start all over.” It sounds very infantilizing and scolding. In my humble opinion, it’s a very damaging way to talk to a patient who is struggling. The last thing you need is a fear driven voice in your mind. Even if this direction is based in science or whatever, you can only be where you are. If you veer off your protocol, so be it. Don’t blow it all up. Just begin again. It’s what life is, after all. We all just start over all the time. Everything you are doing in service to your health is bigger than not doing it. Just do your best. Imagine if you gave yourself as much of a pat on the back for things you’re doing well as the bullshit flogging your give yourself for all the things that don’t go as planned. No, really. Imagine it.

And you know what?
Write to me.
Especially with specific hurdles. I love to get an email. I read tons of blogs on cooking and health, know about a slew of resources for various diagnoses, and I coach people on these things all the time.
Look,
you can do this.

It’s not forever and it’s in service to a future version of yourself who experiences less pain, more joy, and more fun. If you can’t tolerate being sick, you can certainly learn to roast vegetables. It’s the same skill set as a friggin’ Pop Tart.

I have gotten so many requests for this bread recipe, I’m gonna cut right to the chase.

NO GLUTEN.
NO REFINED SUGAR.
NO FLOUR.

I found the original recipe here and along with half the internet, could not believe my good fortune. After following the recipe spot on a few times, I wanted to make some changes to it for myself.

Then I got into making traditional bread and did a lot of reading from Josey Baker who taught me to always toast the nuts and seeds first. I do it for everything now. It’s an extra step, not nearly as much of a pain in the ass as everyone makes it out to be, and it increases the depth of taste like 42 times. So toast the seeds and the nuts.

This recipe is incredibly forgiving and you can make it your own a hundred different ways. The important things that you want to stick to are the psyllium husk and the chia. They hold the bread together. Plus they provide so much fiber. And I should say, this bread is a great comrade in the Getting Digestion Moving department and is more enjoyable than anything a doctor will give you. Plus, it wows guests. And it’s easier than falling off the sidewalk. Which, come to think of it, is sort of a challenge, so pick a new metaphor. Just like in this bread feel free to do swapping. You can use walnuts, dried cherries, cacao nibs… whatever. The important part is that you try it. The tough parts are the ones where you have to wait. DO THE WAITING. Even though, as Tom Petty has told you a million beautiful times, the waiting really is the hardest part.

Preheat the oven to 350 and in a thin layer on a baking sheet, toast your sunflower, pumpkin, and flax seeds along with the chopped almonds for 12 minutes. Combine the toasted goodness with the other dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl whisk together your wet ingredients, then add the wet to the dry in the big bowl. Mix everything together. A LOT. You can use a rubber spatula or just your clean paws.

Put the mash into a loaf pan you have oiled well with coconut oil. Now chill the “dough” for AT LEAST two hours, but if you can chill it longer, do it. See? There’s The Waiting, Part 1. Now preheat oven at 375 and when it’s ready, move your loaf pan to the oven for one hour. Now. Here’s The Hard Part #2: let the loaf cool for 2 hours. I know it’ll be tough, but it helps the bread come together in a way that’s worth it.

I like to double toast my slices. My favorite is to double toast, smear a quarter avocado on the slice, add sliced radish and an egg over medium. DELISH! Other nice things: melted coconut oil with cinnamon. Slathered in butter, straight up. Topped with banana slices. Topped with sautéed mushrooms and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil.

I leave in the morning for a working vacation in the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, and as is usual for me, I’m still rushing around getting ready to go. I like to just pack it all in leading up to a departure so when I get on the plane, I sleep right the hell through it all. I’ve got my client folders ready, my business book downloaded, and my friend Lucy Corin‘s new collection ready to revel in. Have you had a chance to read any of her incredibly beautiful, funny, whipsmart, complicated, and devastating work? Well, she’s one of my favorites. So I am wholly thrilled to have her new book along with me. Plus… I made this to eat on my journey. I though you might like it, too.

I am a lover of salad, but I tend to follow a few tried and true versions all the time. For this venture, I got out of my regular zone and plucked a bunch of greens from the shelf I don’t normally go to at first and I gotta say, I’m loving this concoction.

A LATKE PRIMER:

FROM OLD SCHOOL HEART ATTACK STYLE TO A HEALTHY HANUKKAH AND A FEW FANCY FOODIE VERSIONS AS WELL.

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to thank my body for sticking it out with me through all the years I asked it to do a bunch of stupid shit. I traded my bong and my glass pipe in for running shoes. Daily probiotics have replaced uncharted pounds of gummi bears, and I generally choose to seek solace in meditation rather than unavailable women with great style. And maybe one of my favorite skills I’ve developed in being healthy is the flexibility of not trying to do everything so perfectly that it all ends up going to hell when I can’t swing the Impossible Dream. Which I rarely can. That’s why they call it Impossible. I just try do my best to fit in things that bring my life to a path that features serenity, with room for pit-stops at Mediocrity, The Best I Could Manage, and I Just Didn’t Feel Like It.

To that end, I’ve prepared a Latke compendium here that covers all kinds of versions of one of my favorite dishes that can accompany you on this same journey. Your traditional latke which offers, let’s face it, very little in nutritional fortitude, but then, so many other things! The traditional latke, for me, conjures up a steadfast feeling of comfort like almost nothing else. When I was a kid, I lived a suburban Jew existence in assimilationist tract neighborhoods. We seemed to ride a line between a pride of heritage and a scorn for any kind of militant indentityism that would bring a person into the harsh light of scrutiny. Each holiday season, a diligent Jewish Mom would tote a fryer into our public school classroom with a big bottle of Crisco “Vegetable” oil and a plate of pre-created latkes to fry up for the Christmas-celebrating majority of the school. My classrooms generally had 2 or 3 Jews apiece, and we always knew each other from Hebrew school or simply from this observation: Seinberg. Cohen. Goldstein. And everybody else knew too. Like most “otherings” in life, it is difficult to say just how the texture of being Jewish makes a girl know she’s different. For me it was something about minor chords from music featuring accordions, dark shul head coverings, and an undercurrent of always being in the process of study, our lives a series of Why renderings that brought more questions.

And there were the latkes. At school it’s one thing in open rooms, but at home, the smell would cling to the walls for all 8 nights of candles. And for me, that scent of fried potatoes was separate from all other fried potatoes. French fries don’t smell like latkes. Puffy potato pancakes from diners don’t smell like latkes. Only my mom’s latkes had that smell. I loved it. This was where difference felt triumphant and regal. This was where being baffled by reindeer and a massive cultural lie about a rotund laughing white man felt like a total WIN. I could put down my decoration envy and my longing for a needle, thread and a gargantuan bowl of popcorn in front of a black and white flickering Jimmy Stewart. It is a Wonderful Life, and this week it’s run by a march of beautiful lights, spinning tops, and potatoes. Who doesn’t love a goddang LATKE?!?!?

Since then, I have left my mother’s kitchen and my kitchen has a few other concerns aside from tradition. I have had a serious transformation around food and health, plus many of my loved ones have discovered food sensitivities, allergies and also adventurous spirits in the kitchen. And so I present to you, not just my mom’s latkes, but some gluten-free cakes, vegan options, and just plain exciting ways to get busy with a pancake this season.

Some things will always be true: Make more than you think you need because mere mortals will eat more latkes than you ever thought possible. Make your own applesauce because it’s apple season, it’s more delicious, and it’s easy as hell. You can even make your own crème fresh if sour cream isn’t really hitting the mark anymore. Plus bring in a cream option for your vegan pals as well. They will be the nicest ones to your dog at the party.

May you all gather. And may you all be warm in the joy of this festival.

The Latkes

As luck and a kind fate would have it, latkes are easy to make, if not kind of a pain in the ass. The cooking directions for the first recipe can be used for all the recipes. Basically, you grate, slice, mix, squeeze, and fry. BAM.

Most people go ahead and get russet potatoes for latkes. My mom did. But me? I like a Yukon gold. They are starchier and sturdier, therefor holding the juices in a little better. That being said, I grew up on russets and something about those is comforting to me as well.

Preheat your oven to 200.
Put on an apron for crying out loud.
A cute one if possible.

Grate all your potatoes into a big ass mixing bowl. If you have a food processor, you will never be happier for it than at this moment. If not, maybe a friend or two would help for grating potatoes. Dice your onion small but you don’t have to get all perfectionist about it and throw that in the bowl too. Follow with scallion which I slice as thinly as possible. My mom didn’t use them at all, but I like the color. You could use chives to or omit if you like. Mix everything together after that and form your little pancakes.

Meanwhile heat your oil up in a fryer or a cast iron skillet. I make sure the bottom of the pan is shiny with oil and a little extra for the crisp, but not so much oil that folks is gonna keel ovah. Squeeze the excess moisture from the pancakes and lay them gently in the skillet/fryer. Brown on each side and then place them on a paper towel to soak up any excess oil you don’t need then transfer to an oven safe plate to keep warm while you the fry up the rest.

On these you have to clean your leeks first. Often there is dirt and grit inside the pretty rings so slice them in half the long way after removing the dark green parts and soak them to get alla that grime business taken care of. Now cook your leeks in salted boiling water for about 3 minutes to soften. Set them aside to dry or wring them dry in a towel. Add them to the scallions in a big bowl. Then add in all your other ingredients and stir everything until the incorporation is even and looks fantastic. Continue with your frying directions and enjoy!

Good gravy!!! Where the hell have I been? Well, lots of places, actually. I’ve been in Vermont, Massachusetts, Alabama and beautiful New Orleans Louisiana, y’all. Also I’ve been right here, researching, coaching, reading and cooking. But first, here’s some pictures of some places and stuff just for fun.

Burr Pond with my mom in Vermont

Triple Garlic Yukons with garlic scapes

A beautiful living room in MA

Plus a beautiful hike in the woods

Gulf Shores working vacation

Lunch Break between Clients

The Big Easy Co-Op

French Quarter Horns for Sale

Pink Tree on Magazine Str

So there’s a little bit of what I’ve been doing. But now I’m home and I’m in the kitchen and back at the gym and basically ready to rumble. By home, I mean back in San Francisco, where it rarely gets hot as hell, and usually not until October. Nonetheless, it’s been hot where I’ve been and it kept me dreaming of popsicles. I mean I could not keep the ideas of the icy little things away. Ideas in the shower. Ideas strolling down the street. Ideas upon rising. Ideas waiting in lines. And then finally home to collect popsicle molds and get to it!

The first batch was incredible. Off the hook. Not to brag. Raw coconut water, fresh pluots, and five big fat leaves of basil. Blend. Freeze. For real that’s all it takes and they are NUTSO good. My other ideas have been a touch more labor intensive, but not much. You can totally make these. I had to make em quick to get the yogurt out of the house, as Friday I am beginning my Sweet Summer Cleanse, and dairy and I will be taking a hiatus from each other. Until then, you’ll find me enjoying these.

Preheat your oven to 375. Next, halve your nectarines and get the pit out. Be careful s sometimes the pit wants to stay. Rub all four halves with olive oil. You will probably not need the whole teaspoon but feel free to get generous. Dust liberally with cinnamon. I use Vietnamese cinnamon because it has a particular flavor that makes me feel pretty relentlessly happy. But any cinnamon is a friend of mine, really. Now roast the fruit for 20-30 minutes, until soft.

Meanwhile, on your burner, heat up your sunflower oil. Use all the leaves of tarragon from your sprig and saute until translucent and fragrant. The photo above shows the amount of leaves and the way they should look. Maybe 2 minutes. Put the cinnamon nectarines, tarragon and honey all into your blender and whirl around until it’s all smooth. Pour into your popsicle molds and freeze. Yields 5 pops. 5 INCREDIBLY delicious pops. Each one has 3.1 grams of protein, 49 calories, and a good hunk of B-12. Fantastic dessert!

All of this delicious homemade almond milk has left a ton of almond meal opportunities around my kitchen these days. There have been banana breads, Black Caraway Bread, Pear Cake, and a magically full mason jar of homemade granola. Ginger loves it, so I end up making this version or a variation a coupla times a week along with the milk. It’s really easy. You can vary the ingredients to your liking, of course. In fact, more often than not, recipes are a guide to help you find the dish you want to make and a place to start that’s kind of close.

It’s funny. Like almond milk, granola is a thing I saw in the store all the time, so expensive, and often with evaporated cane juice (AKA sugar) as the first or second ingredient. I would spend hours pouring over the various flavors and when I’d finally find one that looked great, it’d be like 10 bucks for a little bag. In the end, I’d just forego the whole thing, resigning myself to spend my extra ducats someplace else, like fish oil supplements or really nice olive oil. Yet with all of this time spent, somehow I never saw myself as a person who could just MAKE it, be totally in control of the quality of the ingredients, and accomplish this for like 70% less money. It was like the granola only came from Fairy Land, crafted by a skilled tribe of gnomes gifted by the hippie Goddess while their unicorn neighbors in the next village made that tahini dressing that’s so good.

Well, call me a gnome. My version is not too sweet, gluten free, and sugar-free. Total Gnome Throw Down.

Take the almond meal from your almond milk, or from the store, and plop it in a bowl. Add your maple syrup, apple butter, and rolled oats. Stir it all up until the oats begin to absorb the liquid. If you want more clumps, you can add in honey, molasses, or more maple syrup. Once everything is all together, add in the dry ingredients and stir.

Spread out the mixture onto a baking sheet covered in foil, and set it inside your heated oven. Set your timer for 15 minutes. Pull out your concoction and stir it around, then flatten. It will still feel damp. Do this three more times so your granola cooks for a total of one hours. It should come out golden, warm, and dry with small clumps ready to go.

You can sprinkle it into yogurt, put a tin of it in your bag for a healthy snack during the day, get adventurous with probiotic-rich goat milk kefir, or just set it swimming in your almond milk.

In an effort to combat the evil that is perfectionism, I am dedicating today’s post to the effort of a thing rather than its ultimate perfect state. This bread is my first attempt of an altered recipe. Usually I will wait and try and tweak and fuss until I can show you an outcome that sings arias and scales mountaintops. Not today. Gluten-free baking is a whole new venue for me since I discovered by accident that I tend to feel better without the stuff. I’ll tell you about that first and then we’ll get to the kitchen.

So many of my clients come to me with questions about gluten and its side effects. They want to know if it might help them feel better to cleave it from their lives, and how they would know whether it affected them or not. I knew about its inflammatory effects on the system, about the difference between Celiac Disease vs. a gluten sensitivity, intolerance, or a wheat allergy, all of which are actually different, but these were all things I knew from books. Even though books are one of the great loves of my life, I decided to do my own firsthand experiment so I could pass on at least some personal experience. Of course, we are all different and everyone must try their own path. But anyhow, this is how it went for me:

Even though I was fairly sure I did not have any sensitivity, I set out on my experiment. As I learned to do from some doctor’s suggestions in school, I eliminated gluten entirely for one week, and then on the eighth day, I brought it back into my diet. For many years I have had a pretty adorable, if I do say so myself, little belly pooch. After about 3 days of no gluten, my cute pooch began to evaporate and by the seventh day it was gone. While I found the thing to be downright fetching, the idea that it was a result of a food sensitivity made me feel less affectionate toward it.

In addition, have you ever been in a room and found yourself growing increasingly annoyed for no apparent reason and then all of a sudden an air filter clicks off and you realize there has been a constant noise in the room that never registered until it vanished? That’s what happened with my sense of feeling bloated. I had no idea I felt that way until I stopped feeling that way. My assumption was also that I would feel deprived and pissed off about not having gluten for the week it was gone, but it turned out to be no big deal. In fact, the challenge made my choices so streamlined, it was kind of a relief. Even so, I did look forward to the eighth day, on which I had a hunk of my very favorite Acme whole wheat and cranberry bread.

While my mouth rejoiced, my innards stewed and churned and revolted. And there was my answer. My system isn’t that psyched about gluten. I can still choose to eat it, which I do on occasion, sparingly, and knowing full well the consequences. But sometimes, it just seems like I must have pizza. Period.

In the mean time, I like to keep my own kitchen gluten-free now, and as such have been dipping my toe in the pool of attempting baking. It’s hard. Turns out people like to measure by weight rather than volume. In addition, some of the flours are not grain based and therefor act totally differently than grain based flours. Anything can happen. The breads tend to be dense and heavy, which people LOVE to make jokes about. I’ve come to sort of appreciate the richness of their flavors and earthy bottom of the weight. This bread in particular turned out to weigh a full metric ton and not be NEARLY as gorgeous as Heidi Swanson’s version that I based it on. I will say, after all the changes I made, it tastes delicious. It has a kind of sour (teff flour) and bitter (ground espresso) and sweet (carrots and molasses) combination I like. It’s weird at first but each slice tastes better than the last. I am going to keep working on it over time and get it right for you, but here’s to getting it close. A nice pitstop on the way to getting it better.

I also have a wonderful feeling about this bread because the kitchen was so quiet, the light was beautiful, and I got to cook all day yesterday. It’s such a nice feeling for me, and it’s been awhile, so maybe a lot of what I like about this bread is how great I felt while I made it.

First get yourself a nice small bowl and whisk together the yeast in the warm water with the maple syrup. Set this aside while you get busy but check on it to make sure it gets foamy like a little root beer float.

Meanwhile, put your espresso, 3t of your caraway seeds (the rest is for the top later), cocoa, molasses, earth balance (or coconut oil) and salt together in a saucepan and stir it until it’s just melted. It will be the richest color in the world. It makes you not care if the bread is perfect because it smells so good and is so beautiful.

Next pull it off the flame and set it aside while you combine the yeast mixture and the grated carrot in a large bowl. Then add in all your flours. Now add your rich molasses mixture and stir. It won’t come together like a traditional bread dough. It’s looser and seems more like a dense cake mix really. Mine was a little wet and I added some rice flour. I then put it in my mixer for about 3 minutes with the hook attachment. No worry if you don’t have a mixer. The dough doesn’t really need kneading at this point because it’s so loose, but turn it out onto cutting board and form it into a ball. Take your dough ball and place it in an olive oiled bowl, nothing metal, and cover it with a cloth. I leave mine in the sun to rise for about 2 hours while I putter about. If there is no sun, I leave it on top of the oven and bake something else while it rises, using the heat to keep the bread rising.

Return to your dough and look how puffy it is!!! So cute! Bully it gently and push it down. Then turn it out onto a floured surface and make it into a round. Because the dough is heavy, it will settle wide and kind of flatten. Do not despair. Also do not expect that it will turn into a fluffy little debutante in the oven. This is a hearty country girl bread who can toss hay bales all day and picks her teeth with stray stalks. Now put your dough on an oiled cookie sheet and recover it with a tea towel. Let it rise again for another hour. Cover the ole’ lass with a dusting of brown rice flour and a 1/2 teaspoon of your caraway seeds. Then throw it in an oven at 450 for an hour. Turn the heat down to 350 for another half hour and check on her all as you go. As you know if you read this blog, my oven blows so check on your bread for you own times. Hopefully your oven is more well-endowed than mine is. The bread should be crisp on the top and bottom and dense all the way through. Dense, but done.

Ok. Good luck.
Enjoy the imperfections and let me know what you do with this recipe as you go. We can discover it gluten-free perfect version together.